Picidae
by sleepersamizdat
Summary: When you're a bundle of tension and you can't relax, sometimes a little diversion helps.  Niteschach special.
1. Peace for Once

It was one of the rare moments when Rorschach was truly placated and his voice was content to be silent and allow Walter to rest easily within his own skin for this afternoon. The night before, he and Nite Owl had finally sealed up a case tight on a child porn ring that was both extensive and slippery. It was hard to pin down exactly where the head of the hydra was. The case had opened on accident. They were taking out a small time drug dealer when they stumbled onto his stash of materials. Tracing the items back proved nearly impossible and it seemed that child pornography was even more taboo in the seedy underbelly of the down and out. Criminals were proud of their drug deals, robberies, and prostitution but would shrink away from admitting to having an appetite for child porn.

The case eventually ended up fleshing out from an oblique angle. Clues would turn up every once and again when they were pursuing some other deviance. Every time they found evidence, Daniel knew it ate his partner alive from the inside out. It sickened and angered Dan but Rorschach seemed to take it extra personal. If the perp hadn't already had the beating of his life already, Rorschach was damn sure to give it to him now. Sometimes, they didn't live through interrogation. It didn't matter to Rorschach. A month ago, they landed a real break. Rorschach had run out of fingers and had graduated to wrists. They got a meeting time for the addict's next fix and met the man the perp had called "Honey Maker." It was almost impossible to keep Rorschach off of the Honey Maker long enough to get some answers out of him before Rorschach all but strangled the pervert. The case pretty much unraveled from there. They spent the next week back-to-back knocking out all the connections in the ring and making sure all the victims were accounted for. About half the perpetrators were dispensed to the local precinct but the ones that always seemed to weasel out of the system one way or another were dispatched of in other ways.

Repeat offenders were given no parlay with Rorschach in this matter. Dan wasn't surprised to see Rorschach toss some of them out of ten story windows but he was surprised when some of them were bound and tossed into the corners of the harbor. More than a few times Rorschach had insisted on transporting them there where Dan saw a band of the five typical mafia gangsters that they knew where usually up to no good. When Dan gave him a questioning look Rorschach had explained that one of the gang had a 7-year-old daughter that was abducted by a rival family and sold off to a child trafficking ring. In exchange for these child molesters, the gang boss promised information and so far, the arrangement worked to their benefit. Needless to say, when they tossed the child molester out of Archie's hatch, it was considered taken care of. They children rescued from those situations were a little trickier. It was hard to have faith in a society that had already allowed them to slip through the cracks. Dan had a sneaking suspicion that Rorschach was going to end up with case files of 50 some children that he was personally going to make sure were in good homes. It wasn't a bad habit to keep but Dan couldn't figure out where Rorschach got the energy. Little did Dan know that it was always Rorschach that kept Walter Kovacs wound up tight and keyed up for action. Having thoroughly exhausted this case and made the appropriate corrections, Rorschach eased up a bit and the events of the past week and the months that led it up to it fell down on Walter like a ton of bricks. He felt as if he could sleep for a week.


	2. No rest for the Weary

He had just taken a shower and now sat on the floor of Dan's bedroom with his back against the end of the bed and his arms slung over his knees. It was quiet and warm in here and he could hear Daniel downstairs grinding coffee beans and rattling dishes. He pressed his weathered palms to his face and massaged his eye sockets with calloused fingers. He sighed as he felt the puffy bags under his eyes and his eyeballs raked across his eyelids like sandpaper. Walter groaned as a soft voice in the back of his head hissed "weak . . . so weak." He didn't give the voice much credit, as it sounded tired itself. The thought flickered across his mind that the child pornography business will never be over. It will be replaced by a new group of degenerate foul creatures. He countered that with the knowledge that it was his career to stamp out degenerate foul creatures. The voice slithered up in his mind, "But they could be out there right now. They could be doing it right now. Here you sit in luxury while some child is being tortured." Walter felt his anxiety begin to rise up again.

Dan had the television on downstairs as he did the dishes. The drone of the newscast drifted upstairs and Walter could make out the over-dramatic monolog of the self-important talking head, "This important announcement that one of New York City's biggest child prostitution rings has been discovered thanks to two masked vigilantes. The masks Nite Owl and Rorschach have found and brought to prosecution a man called "the Honey Maker" and discovered his ring of connections." At this announcement, Walter heard Daniel issue an exuberant 'woo-hoo!' from the kitchen. Walter buried his face in his hand and shook his head. The newscaster droned on, "Local authorities have been alerted to the potential for more of these establishments and have been given information on what to look for and how to proceed. We'd like to take this opportunity also to inform you on how you too can help and what you can do to protect your community . . . "

He knew that another crew was on tonight. Nothing much got past Doc Manhattan but Rorschach didn't trust him either. "High profile newscast tonight. Quarry will run to ground. Lay low for a while. Sting too big for operations tonight." he muttered to himself. "How can you be so sure?" the voice purred and snarled in his ear at once. His hands flew up to clutch his temples. He crammed his eyes shut. "Leave me alone! God, leave me alone for just tonight!" he mewled in a small whimper. "Weak." the voice spat but receded to the back of his mind to coil in the corner of his consciousness and smolder for the moment. Horrifying images of the materials that they had to sift through to identify victims began leaking into his mind. He thought the quiet of Daniel's bedroom would help still his mind but it was an easier process in theory than in practice. He was too keyed up now. "Have to take my mind off things." he thought. He glanced up at Daniel's bookshelf and near the bottom he noticed a rather large edition of ornithological illustrations. The binding looked old and inviting.

He carefully lifted it from the bookshelf and slipped it out of its casing. He had overheard two librarians talking at the public library once a few months back. One of them had come from the rare books collection at the local university and complained to the other that they needed bookstands that would better protect the spines of their older books. He watched her illustrate this with her hands under shaded eyes and the guise of reading the newspaper.

He pulled one of the pillows off of Daniel's bed and made a ditch in the middle of it with the knife-edge of his hand. Gently, he nestled the book into the crevice of the pillow and began to the lift the pages with very delicate fingers. He felt texture at the printed words and realized they were letterpressed. A close inspection of the illustration plates revealed them to be color lithographs. The selection of wildlife seemed to be native to North America. There were numerous and extensive plates of indigenous owls and Walter could see why this would reside in Daniel's collection. There were other birds as well. Hawks, eagles, sparrows, finches, and jays could be found as well as black birds, nuthatches, and quail. When Walter reached the selection of woodpeckers, he lingered. The heading on the informative text read "Pileated Woodpecker." His eyes flickered over the image. He'd never seen a real specimen but he knew of them. He didn't know why the image held his attention so. The bird itself seemed out of proportion to being "birdlike." Its head was enormous compared with its body. Most of that was a massive pointed beak like a giant pair of shears. It had a brilliant fiery red tuft of feathers cresting its head and that only made its head appear bigger than it was. The rest of its body was draped in thick swathes of black with streaks of white here and there. Such stark colors gave it such an exotic appearance. His face flushed with embarrassment as he could almost hear the Comedian making snide innuendo about gingers and wood pecking. "It's a beautiful collection isn't it?"

Walter's head snapped up to see Daniel leaning against the doorjamb.


	3. And they lived happily ever after

"It's a beautiful collection isn't it?"

Walter's head snapped up to see Daniel leaning against the doorjamb. He held two mugs of steaming coffee in his thick hands. Walter withdrew his hands from the book to hide them in his lap. "No, no! It's okay. I know you'll handle it well. Help yourself." He settled down on the end of the bed.

"Knowing my luck I'll be the one to spill coffee on it. Here," he handed a mug to Walter. "This one's yours. It's got enough sugar in it to knock out your insulin drive."

Walter accepted the cup and Daniel moved to slide from the bed to the floor and settle next to Walter. "I wondered what you were up to in here. It was too quiet." Walter's eyes slid to eye Daniel from the side with a rye expression.

"Okay," said Daniel, "You're usually pretty quiet during down time."

Walter began to drink the coffee and Daniel studied the page that was open in front of them.

"Woodpeckers, eh?" he said without even batting an eye. "They are extraordinary things of beauty. Of course owls are my favorite but woodpeckers almost look like they belong in the rainforest with those bright colors. Picidae family, you know. Poor, Pileated Woodpeckers. You know how you can tell the difference between the males and females?"

Walter gave him a wary look as if expecting a really bad joke.

"Well, it is kind of a bad joke really. It's a bad joke on them. They both have mustaches so you have to look for the mustache. If the mustache is red, it's a male. If it's black, it's a female."

Walter grimaced and Daniel said, "Yeah, I know. Tough break."

Daniel began to drone on about interesting and little known facts about woodpeckers and without realizing it, hooked an arm around Walter to draw him in next to him. Walter simply let him and with his free hand lightly turned the pages, instigating a fresh inundation of factual information from Daniel pertaining to that breed of woodpecker. He rested his head on Daniel's chest and listened to his voice echo in the big barrel cavity of Daniel's lungs. His eyes rested on the beautiful illustrations of the birds. Red Bellied Woodpeckers had a fantastic and intricate checkerboard pattern of black and white with a slick helmet of vermillion plumage. Downy Woodpeckers had little black whiskers and their backs looked like fluffy black coats with dots of white applied with a paintbrush. A snippet paint stroke of red streaked onto the backs of their heads.

Even as he was drinking his coffee, Walter knew it was unavoidably soon that he would lose consciousness and fall asleep. He was warm. The smell of Daniel permeated everything and Daniel's voice vibrated near his head as he listened but no longer took the words into context. It was quiet and warm and a heavy strong hand held him up with the flat of a palm cupping his ribcage. His eyes began to flutter and his battle with consciousness was over.

It wasn't until Dan's shirt felt slightly damp that he stopped talking and looked down at the dead weight on his chest. The dead weight's mouth was hanging open slightly and drooling on Dan. Dan gave a soft chuckle and took the half mug of cooled coffee from the limp knuckled hand. Setting it to the side, he tipped Walter's jaw shut and maneuvered him to cradle his head on his shoulder and thread his other arm under the small man's legs. Walter only roused slightly enough to scrabble a bit as Daniel lifted him. Dan carefully nestled him under the comforter and then lightly kissed his forehead as he whispered, "And they lived happily ever after."


End file.
